album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK SIX. conversation by clair and marian

 

6

"And you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody's wife"
lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

this line brings me to thinking about polyamory,  sometimes called ethical non monogamy ... is our obsession/leaning to/yearning for monogamy society bred...or is it perhapes many peoples healthy and natrual way?...  "And you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody's wife" too implies that something, or a great deal, is lost as a result of sharing 'a flake of life' with someone else.

my way, these days, is rather questioning...of the things that society has shown/taught/indocrinated in me... the things it has allowed me pleasure for, and instilled guit in.  some of its traditional teachings, for example, its ideas around a meat and dairy based diet have been extrememly easy for me to cast off and to recreate into a movement and sustaining non-animal and animal freedom based vegan one, in which i find myself so extremely and contentably happy.

but the concept and reality of momogamy..which  is and feels for me very woven... very very deeply woven... has been and is exceedlingly difficult to find my own way through...to know and see my own colour within, to find out if my own  true and fully vibrant colour is indeed the shades that momogamy  paints ...

clair

 

I think this line's really interesting and after reading up about the song I discover that Cohen said in an interview that during the "free love" era, this type of love triangle was a common occurrence, so I think there is a polyamory theme in this song. Obviously he isn't too happy with it but I wonder if she's happier because she's discovered polyamory? Obviously it could mean instead that it's made them drift apart, though he does thank his betrayer for taking the sadness away from her. There is, though, a sarcasm in 'treating my woman to a flake of your life' - he wasn't prepared to give her much of himself.

I think jealousy is probably a natural thing and polyamory isn't without its problems but I think it might be preferable to monogamy partly because it can save your relationship (you don't need to split up just because you meet someone else or they do).

I too question everything (I think, though maybe there are some things I've been conditioned to believe that I don't question); but then I was a teenager when punk happened and there was an atmosphere of questioning during the punk era. I think eating meat is something people do because that's what they've been brought up to do; maybe it's the same with monogamy.

Marion

yes, indeed, thats interesting what cohen said about the song ... 

i just wanna amke clear, just in case it is unclear, that lies and cheating are not polyamory and thats why i like the phrase 'ethical non monogamy'.  which is about boundary and communication and intimacy and/or love, and not about lies or cheating, the later of which i find totally uncorageous, sad and unsound and infact a case in the favour for polyamory....

mmm... i know...i love that line by leonard cohen later in the song as you mention, "and thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes, i thought it was there for good so i never tried".

i find it very honest and open minded and hearted.

 ~ ~ ~

my friend introduced me to a new game yesterday with all the bloosom coming down which you have to catch in your hands in the breeze.   and i thought, such an simple idea,,,same as catching leaves...neither of which i have done before...and in fact slightly harder than you imagine!

nature sharing love.

its always the simple things.  though, because the blossom, as opposed to leaves, are so much more smaller and more see -though, you look like an absolute nutter playing it ;)

clair

That blossom's everywhere! It ended up all over my living room floor as I collected it on my shoes and bicycle tyres when it rained!
What about the verse:

"She sends her regards.
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?'
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way".

There seems to be an absence of malice about the affair and betrayal and even a gladness that it happened, though is there a bit of indifference as well, as he says 'I guess'? That subject of forgiving has come up again! Maybe it's that he forgives so much that he doesn't need to make a big deal of forgiving? I don't know. I think I feel that about forgiving - that we shouldn't make a big deal of it, just do it.
Marion

mmm...i find that line quite beautiful "i guess that i miss you, i guess i forgive you, i'm glad that you got in my way"...so accepting and open to the light in it all...

getting over it, just getting over it, is so pleasant...

clair

This song for me, though, brings up so many questions: his feelings towards his friend seem so ambiguous; who is Lili Marlene?; how could Jane 'come by' when she's there already, or was this while she was gone?
 
I'm so full of questions generally, it drives people mad; sometimes I get answers but there are more questions than answers (isn't that a song?).
 
I've just noticed that line 'I'm writing you now just to see if you're better.' I like that.
 
Apparently Leonard Cohen tried to sue Leo Sayer for stealing the melody of the chorus in this song for 'When I Need You'. Sayer claimed it was already stolen from Schubert. Who did Schubert nick it from?!
Marion

gosh, lenny has some letting go to do as well then ;) hee hee

i have a lot of questions going around me too.  my firend said yesterday 'do you think there's any chance we can stop using sentences starting in 'why?'

i thought he must be jokng as we had been having some good conversations and i was learning well. :)   ...generally i like people who think and dream.

i have just started reading a book by osho called  'love, freedom and aloneness'. he begins by saying that the english word for love comes from a sanskrit word lobha which means greed.  he goes on to say that 'greed digested becomes love'.  which would suppose that greed isnt a bad starting place??  and that  'love is sharing, greed is hording'.

what do you think?

clair

Love is sharing, greed is hoarding - yes that's true. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting though, as long as it isn't greed, and in that I don't agree with Buddhism which seems to be against wanting. On the subject of love...funnily enough I've been thinking a lot about love today, in a very emotional way. I need to always have love in my life. Maybe that's greed but love brings me back to being the sort of person I want to be.
A friend of mine put something on Facebook that I liked, I think it was about the Osama bin Laden killing: "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr. And another one, from Michael Franti: "you can bomb the world to peices but you can't bomb it into peace."
I've also been thinking about the royal wedding street parties and the fact that I didn't want to celebrate it; maybe we could have street parties to celebrate something else, like Ghandi's birthday or the anniversary of the creation of the NHS - any other suggestions? Otherwise the next celebration will be Margaret Thatcher's death, and I want to celebrate something positive.
Marion

"I need to always have love in my life. Maybe that's greed but love brings me back to being the sort of person I want to be"...nice one m, exactly, it is rather nice isnt it, it is rather nurturing and confortable and fun. i just cant understand why there can be a short supply.  but actually there can be and is.  very strange, like i understand that poverty exsists without enough water or food in all parts of the world and such a munitry obsessed policical system... but lonliness?...with all these people! what!!  ...is going on?!
c

There's too much anger, not enough love, too much taking, not enough giving, too much intolerance, not enough acceptance. I'm as guilty of all this as anyone.

But also, in the case of romantic love, it can really hurt. Maybe people hold themselves back from it (though I'm unable to). Maybe we need to love without possessing, then we could love unselfishly and not hold ourselves back and not be so hurt. 

There's plenty of food in the world but in the west a lot of it gets wasted. Not sure about water, though. We're set for a drought here, though funnily enough whenever our water butt becomes empty it rains, like last night.

I'm still a bit flummoxed by this song; is he enemy or friend now? Goes from one to the other?  Marion 

nice, about the water butt :)

thank you marian

X

 

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK FIVE. conversation by clair and tam

 

5

"Ah, the last time we saw you, you looked so much older, your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder.  You'd been to the station to meet every train, and you came home without Lili Marlene"
lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

the pain in your eyes is heart aching to bare... I mourn for your blues and your ancient wet clothes that disguise your dignity... and where has your self worth gone my dear friend? your longing, so deep and so wide, reveals the space in your soul unloved by yourself. she's gone and the agony is exquisite to hold. but hold it you must and you will and you will. 
tam


you went a lot of times, taking your body down, rusty at the edge where love might begin, weakened and in the currants which push us away from the source of love. 

if love is powerful then love itself can push someone away...  someone who has not his roots in the ground...  and though you went. she did not arrive. you were there but she arrived both long before and long after.  

so you took your body home and fear itself nurished and grew and grew and rooted ever a little more, your body to its hand.

she's not there and the agony is as strong as the hills are long.  but always, below and above, and even in hell itsself. love will be waiting for you.
clair

so you took your body home

body home

body home

and it hurt and it hurt 

as it will when she is missing...

Is love waiting 

love at home 

love at home?

it's not here, she's not here, and it hurtsithurtsithurts... 

t

mmm...i can feel it. what can i feel?  the hurting or the love?  the hurting for love or the love of the hurting?  we are so emotional.  this is our physical essence.  we are all colourful inside from emotion.  each of them shining like like thunder and lightning and like candles and fire flies, like tiny lady birds in the moon, like whispers in sand dunes.

i love you i really LOVE you.  

i can hear the wind in the trees.

c

 

when i'm among the trees

when i listen

really listen...

when i choose to bring my stillness

my Truth

my lesser wisdom...

there is a chance of finding newness

and some oldness and some more

when i hear the trees

when i let their ancient knowing

filter through my stillness

to a place of deeper hearing

when i am with the trees 

when i be there

truly be there

i can hear them say they'll help us

if we listen 

only listen

is it only trees and plants that supply oxygen? ... if so they are helping more than we care to realise, even without listening

and it seems listening might bring us even closer to truely breathing ...

ah, the last time we saw you, you looked so much older
or younger, yes younger, more youthful, more playful
can that really happen?
can trees appear younger?
can things that are growing,
while moving so slowly

grow backwards
grow smaller
get younger
less knowing?

i hope not, we need you
oh i see now, it's springtime
when the trees do look younger
all dressed in their newness
their lushness,
their blossom,
their beauty so haunting
there's one in my street
she's called lili marlene

she's called lili marlene.  :)

i went for a 3 and a half hour walk today, down the lanes and across the fields and far away with a hoboe traveller by my side. he showed me things you can eat on the way and we found a tree all stuck by lighting and invisably hollow all the way through.  he said tress were special if they got struck by lightning.

and so youve been again to meet every train in and you so nearly come home with lili marlene.  but something is stopping love lasting and  growing and instead is vanishing like a busy street in a rainstorm.
c

One of my favorite people is in a band. She plays the violin, and sings, it's just lovely to hear. She and her friends play their music sitting perched in trees. I think more people could do that.

Another friend is a shepherd, a forager, an eco-artist, a community builder, a wizard... She made, for her lover, as a Winter Solstice gift, a set of Tree Runes carved from the twigs of twelve different native trees that she had gathered while out walking in the sun and the snow on Christmas Eve. I watched her etch the runes into the wood with the knife she carries to provide for herself with when she goes out for several nights at a time into the woods, to live off what she can find, sheltered only by the earth and the trees.

My lover is learning ancient skills in wood turning, using a lathe that used to live in a museum, but has been set free. It makes her happy and she is beautiful to watch when she's working, almost as beautiful as she is when she's laughing or loving me. She's turning a lace bobbin at the moment. It's a sad thing that she's creating an object that belongs to a craft that is almost lost.

I am a fire maker, and I like to honor the wood that creates the alchemy that nourishes and nurtures me so deeply. When I collect wood from skips, I thank the trees that grew it, and I mourn how easily it is wasted, left to the landfills. One day we will burn every scrap of wood we can lay our hands on to cook and keep warm. Sometimes I pray that I am wrong, that this will not come to pass. I pray that we will find ways to offer our gratitude to the trees. Take care of them. Listen.

tam

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK FOUR. conversation by clair and neil

 

4

"Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair, She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear, Did you ever go clear?"

lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

No reactive mind
Free of all time
Put me down, I won't fall over
Even  at a funeral.

Lock of hair behind your own little window, holy relic of the delusional donor,
I love you, hair, for who you are.
Are you sad?  Is Jane sad? Is Leonard sad?
Will Leonard get under hairperson's skin?
No one, hardly, (it's single figures, if anyone at all)
Is free of thoughts unkind.

But hair knows something.
neil

"did you ever go clear?"...did you ever manange to tell/hear/think/see/find  truth?

truth is what im interested in

it shines 

somewhere by the rainbow

clair

Is it alchemy shining by the rainbow,
in a pot?
(Rainbows are viewer-specific)

Here is the big truth:
Everything comes from nothing.
...neil

you have just make me realise that rainbows are a particularly good symbol in this instance, because, as you say, that truth is so often viewer specific. i'm going to look for definitions of truth...

truth:  the quality or state of being true
true : in accordance with fact or reality

... mmm! the oxford dictionary not really helping.  (clearly a bit behind the times...;)


because as we were saying, lots of truth is subjective, it is seen through somebodies eyes, filtered by their perceptions, experiences and beliefs. my experience is mine and your experience is yours.  i can only experience you though my experience or you, not you through you yourself. and visa versa.

so i wonder what i'm looking for when i say 'im interested in truth'?
maybe i'm interested in perception when that perception is reached through a clarity, insight, non-defensive, wiseness and logic.  i think i enjoy that kind of truth! ;) anyway, i know when i hear or find truth cos it shines in a different colour!

i'm going to get a definition of 'absolute truth'...

absolute truth: The Absolute is the concept of an unconditional reality which transends limited, conditional, everyday existence

mmm, i think i like truth that is a bit closer to 'absolute truth'..! (but then my ex-boyfriend did use to say 'you want the moon on a stick'...)  hee hee :)

  

Yes, I like the sound of that kind of perception. It's possible, now and then, by degrees, in waves!

sorry, neil, not quite sure what this is referring to ? ;) 

It refers to the kind of perception that is reached through "a clarity, insight, non-defensive, wiseness and logic", the kind of truth you enjoy. It's the kind of truth I enjoy too and, occasionally, I believe I have experienced it, now and then, by degrees, in waves!  

 ...And what does wanting a moon on a stick mean exactly?

that you want it all... i guess... i dont... (but of course i do..)

What's it made of?

its made of the moon :) 

 If you had the moon on a stick  and you took a lick, what would it taste of?

                            
chalk...but the moon on a stick is not not strickly for eating...

~ ~ ~

"did you ever go clear"? leonard cohen

there is some discussion about what leonard meant when he said the words, 'did you ever go clear'.  there is some support that the 'clear' he was talking about came from launguage used in scientology.  

i write this to bring, for those of us who didnt know, context to the following...

c

Scientology's big-carrot, (there's only one bigger*), "Clear" mind  (achieved by deprogramming workshops etc, estimated cost, $128,000) perceives reality without distorting filters, i.e. the Truth, but has such a mind ever actually existed?
 "A Clear is a being who no longer has his own reactive mind, and therefore suffers none of the ill effects the reactive mind can cause. The Clear has no engrams which, when restimulated, throw out the correctness of his computations by entering hidden and false data."
 *"Thetan"

 thetan : in scientology, the state of operating thetan is a spiritual state above clear.

neil

~ ~ ~

For me, being present is synonymous with being true.
Occasionally, every now and then, I feel like I am  present in the present... not interfering, not not interfering...
Relaxed. Alert.  Just being.
Just not looking for my keys.
But a dog is never going to understand the  internal combustion engine.
I was once  fancied myself a guru, other people even fancied me a guru!   Now I am meek and humble...
mumble,
toil
and tumble.

n

a dog might not understand the internal combustion engine but thats why she is very good at being in the present. she is just being. a state animals find, through their relative simplicity, easy, while humans earnestly limp along somewhere in the distance behind.
c

You differentiate animals from humans by their relative complexity/simplicity.  What do you think caused humans to start losing their innate animal ability to  be present, to just be?  When did it happen?

it happened with the advent of self awareness and was probably evident as soon as humans became humans...

c

Aren't there other animals with self-awareness besides da oowoman and da ooman?
n

interesting point, and more interesting, how does it effect them...maybe they havent got the levels that we do and which can make things uncomfortable for us?

Magpies have been shown to possess self-awareness, possibly connected with their covert collections of shiny loot....

Some models of therapeutic bodywork use the model of the "splinting reflex" to explain human's emotional/perceptual limitations and difficulty with recovering from past hurts.  When a bone breaks, the muscles automatically contract around the fracture to form a protective splint, to minimise further injury. This can also be our response to non-physical traumas and we don't appear to know how to let go again, when the reflex is no longer needed.

When an animal experiences trauma it feels it, it trembles and shakes and the trauma dissipates. Humans, according to this model, don't do this.  The model doesn't explain why we developed this quirk, though... Civilisation?  Personally, I tremble quite easily nowadays!

i think that with awareness comes the ability to make things voluntary (rather than involuntary).  for example, most of the systems within the body are involuntary (digestion, circulation etc). but breathing is both voluntary and involuntary, we have some control over it and also it can do it without our conscious help. 

i think our awareness picks up on the involuntary protective mechanisms you talk about and starts mimicing them, well after their natrual sell by date.

is it nice, self awareness?

I'm not sure - I think the splinting reflex model suggests that it is through awareness that the stupid body (autonomic nervous system?) can be redirected (reminded).

Self-dissolving self-awareness is the best!

~ ~ ~

Anyway pondering and back to your words on absolute truth, I remembered radical feminist theologian Mary Daly, (dead at 81) who redefined god as a verb. as a verb..? 'to god, i god, you god, they god'... how does that work please :) You've got it there pretty well :). Similarly, if you had a cold, you might say "I'm colding" rather than "I've got a cold", thus expressing the truth that a cold is an interactive process rather than an static object. i like plays on different things...experimenting... is she bringing god into the individual and not having it as an entity outside? God cannot be brought into the individual because "God" is a verb i.e. an action or a process, perhaps in the same the same way that life cannot be put into an organism - it simply arises out the organism's own organisation.  I didn’t know she was dead, just last year.  I’ve often wondered how she was faring; did she have enough money to feed herself? well i doubt whe died of starvation ;) hee hee  Here works included: "Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big." It's not easy being an radical old feminist theologian in Born-Again America... Perhaps you could say something about transcendence. this makes me laugh...mmm,,, transcendence***not sure... what would you like to say about it? :) Ha! Well, I asked because you included a definition of the absolute as "the concept of unconditional reality which transcends limited, unconditional reality."  I wondered what your vision of before and after transcendence is, and the relationship between the two. When you have found absolute truth what will it be like? for you? it will be like long green grass and open windows :)    Sounds lovely.  Also, reminds me of the ancient Greeks' Elysian Fields, the final resting place for the souls of the heroic and virtuous... warm caressing meadow grass.   As we were contemplating  absolute truth, my inner  eyes were already pointing heavenwards, towards the blinding bright light of enlightenment, so the moon was suggesting herself to me on your stick as absolute truth on a stick! The expression initially brought to mind the pop star  Prince (who wrote this song about losing love  Madonna (or Kylie?) once  referred to him as Sex on a Stick. So I guess that was influencing my perception of your moon. on my wall for a long time, in which a figure attempts to reach the moon with the aid of a very long ladder.  I can't remember whose aspirational zeal it referenced, mine or my partner's, probably both, but I remember that her untamed, uncompromising and passionate desire for the moon wrought terrible destruction on us both! Blake did his engraving at the height of the French revolutionary terror. like your style n :) Thanks.  I like yours too.  neil

                 album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971


CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK THREE. conversation by clair and aisha

 

3

"I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert.
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record"
lenoard cohen

reading this just reminds me so much of days at college  when i started listening to leonard cohen...the feeling of  the beginning of non child/adult space, and the place i found myself in then...

is it most important to keep records when you feel you're 'living for nothing'?...(its bound to make good songs ;)

and is emotion stronger when life is, (or feels) meaningless?  and so we should write it all down.  my feeling is that we should get practised in writing it all down what ever the weather...kind of a way of freezing feeling, to be revisited later...

clair

Is it possible to write down and document the nothing, the absence of
things and happenings. ‘You are living for nothing now…’, were we ever
living for anything else than nothing? Just the illusion of something.

Was it only of our creation that everything felt so purposeful and driven.
Like an empty room which feels too stark, only echo and a repetition of
emptiness… so we bring in bookcases and meaning in order to furnish our
life because nothing is too loud, like a gaping mouth and no song.

Or is the beginning of nothing the start of possibility and freedom, that
the bonds of spiralling thought are cast off and we are only here, now in
this moment, heart beating, breath in, and then out on a loop.
aisha


exactly, such compulsion to fill it up, to make ourselves at home with cushions, inside and outside.  to cushion the fall.  

maybe she was really living.  maybe she had chosen to live like that.  because it makes experience intensify - without the distraction of comfort, in its many many shades and gowns of texture and colour
clair 

I like the idea of cushions on the inside. To absorb the shock, reduce the
echo and provide somewhere to nest up.

Wondering about recording the now to document and to keep account of the
minutes passing. It feels like writing for a distant future time to give
the current moment dimensions and meaning? Strange speaking for a future
self to recollect and savour the event once is has past and again we come
back to being in the present just for the presence of that moment and no
further end. Is that possible or by using letters and words to encase it
in, it some how becomes an object to be viewed and no longer experienced.
Like you say, good content for songs ...that can then be listened to by
others... needing expresion for the moments they find themselves in.

I like this simple view about writing, "It just takes 26 letters to create
the universe, the word is dismantled and then reassembled through the lens
of a pen and verse." The South African poet Lebo Mashile
Aisha

mmm...imagine if there lived a man in a valley far away from all.  he was born in the valley and when he was very young his mother had to leave him in the hands of the lady birds and butterflies, beetles, ravens and crows, furry rabbits and badgers, foxes and sqirrils, spiders and snails, apple trees and wild strawberry plants.


slowly he grow up and went about his exsistance, no pen, no paper, no other human, just him and the valley and the animals that lived there.


when he slept all the baby bunnies and grown up rabbits slept around his body and close to each other to keep warm and cosy and not alone.


when an animal was ill and slowly died he buried them lovingly in the soil and topped it off with a little plant in the ground.


nobody has heard of him and nobody will read or hear his thoughts or his music before and after he has gone.

mmm...
c

Are we the only ones to record thoughts, expressions or stories? Maybe...
they are documented in the surroundings we live in. No person saw the man,
or knew of him but the wind tuoched his face, the ground rose up to his
footsteps and the animals felt his heart beat. A life well spent, taking
only what he needed and giving back in love.
Aisha x


yum yes. well exactly and nice. i deeply know my heart would sing if it spent more time with animals.  it is one issue for me, with city dwelling, as i speak of domestic pets.  i am a bit pet hungry. again. 

i have even been thinking, as not allowed a pet in this city dwelling, of taking some fish and putting their lives in a biorb.  very nice aquarium. those tiny weeny fish ones which glow under the light and swim in showls.  not very vegan for a vegan i know. 


now im thinking again of him lined up with all the forest animals each of them smiling...
c X


I think animals make us appreciate simple things like smelling are
surroundings, taking time to get strokes and loving and to be joyful in
seeing people. Not so sure what the licking your bits or smelling other
dogs bum holes can teach us. But on the whole they bring new aspects to
our life. I just want more wild nature in my life. Building a house in the
desert, well sounds alright with big skies and endless stars but I would
miss the trees. For me they are the natural cathedrals, rising high up up
up, teaching us how to be strong, to accept the patterns of change and
offer everything in abundance. I would prefer to be the tree providing
holes for woodpeckers, insects for warblers, bark for lichen and shelter
for deer, than the man. At night when we sleep, they are our guardians,
keeping watch and breathing deep.
A xx


:)... yes they are very good at breathing.  


their needs are so very differnt...they are so strong and atrong in all weathers, so happy in water without raincoat or shelter, so too in the scorching sun without sun cream or unbrella...

~ ~ ~ 


i think the women in leonard cohens song wasnt looking to find peace or nurishment  "i hear that your building your little house deep in the dessert"  ... that idea of pushing yourself to your limits and not caring either way...maybe a metaphor for putting yourself in a harsh place and seeming to have choosen it...
 
i was just imagining that everyone had a comfort/love/energy metre gauge natrually in their arm, like the dial on a dashboard which shows the petrol level which everyone could see


and in the same way you put petrol into your car, people could feed what people needed back into them...  and easily because they could see on the gauge what was needed...it had lots of differnt levels on it, like need to receive gratitude or be heard or be smiled at or to have fun or to recieve touch or whatever ...


and everyone was invested in keeping as many people as poss 'topped up' because they knew that was how the world was most beautiful.

~  ~  ~


thank you aisha for writing with me.  i am really enjoying this writing project and have enjoyed writing with you.  and am looking forward to the next person i write with and so, like leonard cohen said, "...keeping some kind of record"
c

     album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971




CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK TWO. conversation by clair and anna

 

2

"New York is cold but I like where I'm living,  There's music on Clinton street all through the evening"   lenoard cohen

                                                                            ~  ~  ~ 

Somehow I can only hear this to the tune of America by Paul Simon, although it doesn't quite scan. Perhaps because Songs of Love and Hate is an album of Len's that I don't know. We call him Len in our family since my kids saw him at Glastonbury a few years ago (the one year I didn't go, damn it) and called me after the performance, moved beyond words. My daughter and I then went to the Big Chill, specifically to see him, and stood swaying and singing for two blissful hours... I'd loved the first two albums back in the 70s and I'm Your Man, whenever that was and his words gradually crept into the kids' hearts as well as mine, over the years. I've been going to gigs since 1969 (Crosby, Stills Nash and (for the first time) Young), so I've seen a few, but Leonard Cohen perfoms in a way that touches me and makes me want to be a better person, more like the version of him that I project onto him.
 
I assume the music on Clinton Street is good music, which would enrich life - is it just nearby so you can always pop in, or is it loud so you can always hear it? And now I think - what if it was drum and bass, night after night? But he likes where he's living, so it's all good.
 
xx
 
ps Now I can't work out if I sent this already, but since finishing it I've checked out the album and of course I know most of the songs on it, especially this one - was I thinking I had to own an album to know it?
 
xx
anna

i think its cos there is often music there...the music becomes part of the walk on clinton st and becomes part of your memory of that town...

i saw len at big chill too.  and i snuck in to the brighton centre and saw his last 4 songs.  the one on my entry was famous blue raincoat. yum...

he's pretty badass.  its a paradox but often true, that the first music of an artist becomes less dated sounding than the music that follows.  songs of love and hate, as it played recently on my record player, had no hint of date, no hint of less, just everything deep and strong and heavily romantic...
clair 

'New York is cold but I like where I'm living....'
I like where I'm living too - I was going to write Brighton is... but I like where I'm living, but there's nothing I want to put in that gap. I find the hilliness hard while I have this ongoing exhaustion, but without the hills there'd not be the views and I love the views. 
anna

yes i try to avoid the hills on my bike too ;) the view is great when you get on top of one though...cityscapes do it for me actually...sometimes i think about what i would choose if was going to have one of those wall sized wallpapers which makes a massive massive picture, you know the ones i mean? ... ive seen a cloud and mountain one and the inside of a caravan one! but i would probably be drawn to a cityscape...all that darkness interrupted by all the tiny living lites...

clair

I don't think I'd like that wallpaper, whatever the picture. But I discover (late in life), that I love the city - or this one at least. If I had to make a choice, it's the coast that holds me. I love its endless mutability - the infinite combinations of tide and light and weather. I love feeling on the edge of humanity, not surrounded by it - looking out and seeing the emptiness. I love how it makes me get over myself - I'm nothing, just a grain of sand, here for a moment, gone for eternity.  Inland ain't got that.

mmm...i like to hear about that, i find myself surprised with how difficult it is for me to connect with nature in deep way...the reality that we are on the very edge of a massive piece of land...


i am surprised how the water stays where it is (most of the time)...the way that it natrally comes in and out in and out but creates its boundary and then keeps within it and with so much land to cover it finds itself happy there.  or naturally there...


it is a beautiful evening tonite, at 10pm soooo warm...i just went out walking.  not a single bit of coldness left. all warmed up by the sun...
clair